Monday, May 21, 2012

A Contract Is a Contract…

We are aware of past
cost-benefit analyses used by Ty Fahner’s Civic Committee of the Commercial
Club of Chicago and Laurence Msall’s Civic Federation. They are prejudicial.
"Participants in the debate over pension accounting have a variety of
agendas. If the purpose is to make the situation of these pension funds appear
as dire as possible, [for instance], then using a risk-free rate of return to
assess their liabilities can be useful..." (The Center for Economic and
Policy Research, January 2012).

We are also aware of the
Civic Committee’s obverse group, Illinois Is Broke, and its discriminatory
pressures to persistently misinform the majority of Illinois citizenry.
Moreover, we are aware of the self-absorbed interests of those legislators who
will attempt to garner the support of the majority of voters for their
re-election by breaking promises and violating the rights of teachers in their
districts, even though it will be legally and morally wrong to ignore the
welfare of a minority of their citizenry, its teachers, and the constitutional
commitments made to them.

A
contract is “a promise or set of promises, for breach of which the law gives a
remedy, or the performance of which the law in some way recognizes as a duty”
(1 Williston, Contracts 1, 4th ed. 2009). “[It is] a transaction involving two or more
individuals whereby each becomes obligated to the other, with reciprocal rights
to demand performance of what is promised by each respectively” (282 P. 2d
1084, 1088).

Just as Fahner stated on
WTTW’s Chicago Tonight in late April that “This [financial mess] was not
created by the people entitled to the benefits… If this happened in the private
sector… If someone didn’t pay in the money…There would be prosecutions going.” We also agree that to uphold a contract is of vital
social, political, economic, legal and moral significance not only for the
prosperous few, but for the rest of us.Breaking a contract
threatens the integrity of all laws that govern and protect the citizenry.

Teacher/Poet/Musician

Copyrights & Fair Use: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of issues vital to a democracy. I believe this constitutes a “fair use” of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law.

Persona

A writer must “know and have an ever-present consciousness that this world is a world of fools and rogues… tormented with envy, consumed with vanity; selfish, false, cruel, cursed with illusions… He should free himself of all doctrines, theories, etiquettes, politics…” —Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?). “The nobility of the writer's occupation lies in resisting oppression, thus in accepting isolation” —Albert Camus (1913-1960). “What are you gonna do” —Bertha Brown (1895-1987).